The skyscraper soars from some vantage points and flops from others

The flamboyant New York real estate developer, whose buildings gave new meaning to the word "flashy," was planning a massive skyscraper, perhaps as tall as 150 stories, on the riverfront site of the seven-story Chicago Sun-Times building at 401 N. Wabash Ave.

It was as if Godzilla were about to wade ashore from Lake Michigan and breathe fire on the skyline.

Now, after the fear spawned by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks shortened it, "The Apprentice" hyped it and the housing market's collapse left about a third of its interior unsold, the 92-story Trump International Hotel & Tower is finally here -- not vulgar, respectable enough, but still short of Chicago's soaring architectural standards.

This shiny, glass-sheathed tower -- the seventh tallest building in the world, the tallest in America since the 1974 completion of Sears Tower and the tallest structure its height-obsessed developer has ever built -- meets the ground superbly and touches the sky weakly.

It is exhilaratingly thin from some angles and unpardonably fat from others.

Its reflective, silver-blue curtain wall provides a poetic, ever-changing palette for the sky and passing clouds. Yet it lacks a memorable, consistently effective skyline silhouette, like the mighty X-braced John Hancock Center, or a fresh take on the residential skyscraper, like the soon-to-be-finished Aqua tower and its spectacularly undulating balconies.

The tower was designed by Chicago architect Adrian Smith and his former colleagues at the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, led by managing partner Richard Tomlinson. (Smith left SOM in 2006 to start his own firm.) The $850 million hotel and condo project assumed its final architectural form in May, but only now, with the impending completion of the public spaces around it, can its contribution to the cityscape be fully assessed.

The upper level of the tower's three-tiered riverwalk was scheduled to open Friday. That will give Chicagoans and visitors their first chance to experience a generous public space that compensates for the skyscraper's all too visible bulk.

Stacking more than 2 million square feet of shops, parking, a health club, a hotel and condos on a narrow, boomerang-shaped site, as the Trump Tower does, is not unlike cramming an oversize McMansion on a typical suburban lot. But this is Chicago, where anything can be built anywhere provided you have the requisite cash and clout.

How to prevent such girth from crushing everything around it?

Smith's response grows from his philosophy of contextualism. He does not boldly express the tower's bones, as the Hancock does. Instead, he looks outward for inspiration, treating the skyscraper's surroundings as an unfinished canvas that his building will complete.

Three vigorous setbacks (at the 16th, 29th and 51st floors) roughly match the roof heights of the Wrigley Building's base, the River Plaza residential high-rise at 405 N. Wabash and 330 North Wabash by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

From the 51st floor, the tower shoots skyward to its roof at 1,133 feet, a curving drum that screens mechanical equipment at 1,174 feet and the tip of its gray, fiberglass-covered spire at 1,361 feet 6 inches.

The approach yields a handsome telescoping tower, reminiscent of the classic skyscrapers of the 1920s, that is infinitely superior to the exposed-concrete condo towers, plunked atop parking podiums, that have disfigured downtown in recent years.

Yet that is to assess the Trump Tower by the lowest possible standard. Measured by the higher standard of Chicago's skyline icons, it is less satisfying.

Like the former Sears Tower, Trump changes constantly in profile as you move around it. But unlike Sears (now Willis Tower) or the Hancock, its skyline quality is disappointingly irregular.

Among the best elements is the skyscraper's richly textured curtain wall. It is a dazzling light catcher, coloring the skyscraper in subtle hues of blue, silver, gray and white.

The wall's vertical proportions, stainless steel fins and bands of louvers echo Mies' spare language at 330 North Wabash. They also create an effective transition between that tower's fine-grained modernism and the fine-grained traditionalism of the Wrigley.

At certain hours of the day, to be sure, the sun's reflections off the steel fins cast a blinding glare. Trump flash does not die easily. Nor does Trump bigness, and this tower is nothing if not big as it faces the Chicago River, its two riverfront facades roughly as long as a football field.

All that frontage and the drop-dead views it provides are a developer's dream -- and a stiff challenge for an architect trying to achieve the improbable goal of making a megatower blend in with its surroundings.

Viewpoint matters

Indeed, this skyscraper is at its most convincing when it is viewed in fragments rather than as a whole, or from angles that conceal its bulk.